Theft of clothing and other soft goods articles from retail stores is a very serious problem. The cost of replacing the stolen articles annually runs in the billions of dollars and is increasing.
Advanced electronic systems employed to prevent theft of clothing articles generally comprise a marker element secured to the article and an electronic interrogator adapted to detect a signal produced by marker, An example of such a system may be found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,510,489 to Anderson, III, et al., owned by the assignee of the present invention and incorporated herein by reference. Typically, the interrogator includes a transmitting apparatus, including a drive coil, situated on one side of a passage leading a store exit and a receive coil for detecting the response signal from the marker at the other side of the passage. The drive coil produces an interrogation signal that energizes the marker, When energy marker produces an identifiable response is by the receive coil. Detection of the presence of the response signal indicates that the article has not been properly checked out by the cashier and may, in fact, be stolen.
One of the major considerations with such theft detection systems is the manner of fastening to the clothing or similar articles. A number of structures have been developed to securely fix the markers to the article and prevent unauthorized removal of the markers by shoplifters. It must be recognized, however, that the markers must also be easy to remove by authorized personnel, such as a cashier, following purchase of the article by a customer. It is because of this latter consideration that a completely acceptable marker construction resistant to unauthorized removal has not heretofore been developed in the art. While the markers are generally too difficult to remove from the article in the open, shoplifters in the past have been successful in taking the article to, for example, a fitting room where they can use tools to remove the article without being observed.
The present invention addresses this problem by providing an advanced electronic system including a lightweight, compact marker adapted to generate a response signal when the marker body is opened to remove the marker from an article.